Tony Blair: A 10-Year Retrospective

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On May 10, 2007—almost exactly 10 years after he became Britain’s youngest prime minister since the Napoleonic wars—Tony Blair announced that he would officially tender his resignation in June. Blair’s long-anticipated departure triggered deliberation over his place in British history after a decade in power.

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair was born in Edinburgh on May 6, 1953. He attended Fettes College in Edinburgh (a school often viewed as “Scotland’s Eton”) and St. John’s College, Oxford, where he combined the study of law with interest in religious ideas and popular music, but he displayed little enthusiasm for politics until he met his future wife, Cherie Booth.

Blair was elected in 1983 to the safe Labour parliamentary seat of Sedgefield, a tight-knit former mining district in northeastern England. By 1988 he had been promoted to the shadow cabinet, and over the next six years he was a Labour Party spokesman. He played a growing role in boosting the party’s image as a modern force that could be trusted with government. When party leader John Smith died suddenly in May 1994, Blair seized the opportunity, and on July 21 he was elected leader with 57% support. Blair sought to position Labour firmly in the political centre, abandoning the party’s stated commitment to the nationalization of the economy, reducing links with trade unions, and rebranding the party as “New Labour.” The strategy worked, and on May 1, 1997, he won a landslide victory over Conservative Prime Minister John Major after having waged a triumphant campaign that centred on the promise that “things can only get better.” The next day Blair was sworn in as prime minister, armed with the biggest parliamentary majority in the history of the Labour Party and the largest for any party since 1945.

Inspired by sociologist Anthony Giddens, Blair described his philosophy of government as “the Third Way.” He claimed that his policies were designed to enable social democracy to respond to the challenges of the worldwide market economy and to equip citizens to cope with what Giddens called “the major revolutions of our time,” including globalization. Perhaps the most coherent view about Blair’s search for the Third Way was that it was an endeavour to discover a form of progressive politics, distinguishing itself from the conservatism of both left and right. Meanwhile, Blair frequently looked for advice from businessmen who had come to prominence under Conservative former prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Private firms were given an important role in financing state infrastructure projects, despite widespread criticism that this financing was on terms often disadvantageous to the taxpayer. The health service, the police, and many other agencies saw the rise of a new managerial elite who imposed efficiency targets that often failed to raise standards but left these organizations burdened by expensive bureaucracies.

Blair gave control of the economic agenda to Gordon Brown, his chancellor of the Exchequer and eventual successor. All other members of his government and the permanent civil service were sidelined in the policy-making process. Blair gave important powers to unelected advisers, notably spin doctor Alistair Campbell. The marketing image they adopted was known as “Cool Britannia,” the suggestion that Britain was a dynamic and successful country that had reinvented itself after years of decline and internal division. New Labour eagerly sought the approval of the mass-circulation press by embracing celebrity culture as well as respect for traditional values, including the monarchy. Public funding for the arts was paltry, while vast sums were found for the construction of the Millennium Dome (which turned out to be an expensive folly that was finally sold in 2002 to a private investor).

As a new election approached, Blair was starting to be viewed skeptically by the population as it became clear that his government remained highly centralized and that he had no plans for overdue reforms in the public services. Opinion polls found that there was public concern regarding financial misbehaviour in government, manipulation of the media, the granting of honours to individuals who contributed to Labour Party funds, nepotism, and other actions that put the interests of business before ordinary citizens. Facing a deeply unpopular opposition, however, Blair was easily reelected in May 2001—with the lowest voter turnout since 1918.

His second term was dominated by international affairs. In the late 1990s he had won praise by mounting peacekeeping operations in the Serbian province of Kosovo and in Sierra Leone. After the terrorist attacks in the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, Britain played a key role in forming an international coalition that succeeded in driving the Taliban from power in Afghanistan. Blair’s reputation as a global statesman was badly damaged, however, by his enthusiastic support for the U.S.-led military intervention in Iraq in 2003. He enjoyed a good relationship with Pres. George W. Bush but fell out with key European allies and was unable or unwilling to influence U.S. strategy in Iraq.

At home, many people in Britain felt that the country was in the grip of a serious malaise. Social cohesion seemed to be collapsing in much of urban Britain, as shown by a steep rise in violent crime and open drug dealing. Public officials in the police, civil service, and education sectors were unable to grapple effectively with the social crisis as they struggled to meet bureaucratic targets and to display political correctness. After Islamic extremists exploded bombs in London on July 7, 2005, killing 54 people, Blair began to emphasize the need for a common public culture, and former multicultural policies that encouraged ethnic groups to separate into different communities were repudiated.

In May 2005 Blair took Labour to an unprecedented third straight electoral victory but with a sharply reduced majority. Simmering revolt in the Labour Party over both Iraq and Blair’s rejection of core Labour policies led him to promise that he would resign before the next election. At the Labour Party conference in September 2006, he declared that he would be gone before the next annual conference. True to his word, he retired on June 24, 2007.

Blair’s decade in office was marked by uninterrupted economic growth and a more independent Bank of England. Blair also preserved much of Thatcher’s market radicalism while managing to place greater emphasis on social justice. Numerous minority groups found his government more sympathetic to their concerns, notably homosexuals, who by 2004 were allowed to enter into civil partnerships recognized by the law. Scotland and Wales received their own devolved parliaments. Peace appeared to have finally been restored to Northern Ireland, and many believed that this advance would come to be seen as his most enduring political legacy. Throughout, Blair showed a remarkable ability to convey optimism and energy in the face of adversity caused not least by the failure in Iraq.

Critics of his record argued that instead of using his parliamentary majority to reform the institutions of state, he pursued incoherent short-term policies that left Britain ill-governed in important areas. The state became more intrusive and even more authoritarian without managing to overcome a range of social ills, particularly rising crime and drug use. The economy grew steadily, but it was burdened by low productivity and growing volumes of personal and state debt. Citizens were heavily taxed, and Britain lost much of its remaining manufacturing base, becoming more dependent on financial services and low-skilled sectors for progress. Blair was criticized for exposing the economy to the forces of globalization more than any other large Western country, allowing millions of mainly low-skilled migrant workers to settle in the country. The biggest cloud hanging over his reputation was the failure to ensure that British involvement in the invasion and occupation of Iraq resulted in policies capable of preventing that country from becoming a disastrous source of instability in the Middle East. Nonetheless, after 10 years in office but still only in his early 50s, Blair was not ready to retire from the world scene. This was evident in his decision to accept the appointment as the official Middle East envoy of the Quartet group (the U.S., the UN, the EU, and Russia).

History could judge his premiership more kindly in the future. In 2007, however, Blair was widely viewed as a lucky politician with exceptional talents that enabled him to be a successful vote winner but ultimately lacking the ability to be a noteworthy reformer at home or a stabilizing force in a world facing the resurgence of dangerous divisions.

Tom Gallagher is Professor of Ethnic Peace and Conflict at the University of Bradford, Eng.
Tom Gallagher

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